In eBOYS, Randall Stross takes us behind the scenes and inside the heads of the gutsy entrepreneurs who are financing the hottest businesses on the Web. The six tall men who started Benchmark, Silicon Valley's most exciting venture capital firm, put themselves at the cutting edge of the new economy by backing billion dollar start-ups like eBay and Webvan. The risks were enormous--but the rewards have proven to be staggering. Within two years, eBay's net worth grew from $20 million to more ...

Thomas Edison’s greatest invention? His own fame.At the height of his fame Thomas Alva Edison was hailed as “the Napoleon of invention” and blazed in the public imagination as a virtual demigod. Starting with the first public demonstrations of the phonograph in 1878 and extending through the development of incandescent light and the first motion picture cameras, Edison’s name became emblematic of all the wonder and promise of the emerging age of technological marve...

Bulls in the China Shop is an engagingly anecdotal, lucidly written account of the tragicomic cultural and political misadventures that have plagues American commercial ventures over the past two decades in the People’s Republic of China.When diplomatic tensions between the two countries were eased in the 1970s, American businesses rushed to China, lured by the world’s largest national market. As they tried to introduce capitalism to China’s socialist society they soon dis...

The first inside account of life within a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, eBoys is the fascinating true story of the six tall men who backed eBay, Webvan, and other billion-dollar start-ups that are transforming the Internet and setting a new pace for the economy.Randall Stross, author of acclaimed books on Microsoft and Steve Jobs, blends a business historian's perspective with a journalist's flair for suspenseful storytelling to look at wealth creation up cl...

Twice a year in the heart of Silicon Valley, a small investment firm called Y Combinator selects an elite group of young entrepreneurs from around the world for three months of intense work and instruction. Their brand-new two- or three-person start-ups are given a seemingly impossible challenge: to turn a raw idea into a viable business, fast.Each YC session culminates in a demo day, when investors and venture capitalists flock to hear pitches from the new graduates. Any one of th...

"Readers will emerge with a great deal of respect for a fiercely independent woman who battled sexism to reach the pinnacle of her profession" (Publishers Weekly).Before taking her place as the second woman on the Supreme Court of the United States, Ruth Bader Ginsburg quietly led a revolution and forever changed life in America for both men and women. Reserved and quiet, she didn't set out to be a trailblazer, but there was something in her way: the law....

A New York Times Notable Book: A revealing look at the famous twentieth-century children's author who brought us The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.Few writers have had the enduring cultural influence of Roald Dahl, who inspired generations of loyal readers. Acclaimed biographer Jeremy Treglown cuts no corners in humanizing this longstanding immortal of juvenile fiction.Roald Dahl explores this master of children's liter...

This true account of two young Americans turning traitor during the Cold War is an "absolutely smashing real-life spy story" ( New York Times Book Review ).National BestsellerAt the height of the Cold War, some of the nation's most precious secrets passed through a CIA contractor in Southern California. Only a handful of employees were cleared to handle the intelligence that came through the Black ...

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Bruce Catton's acclaimed two-book biography of complex and controversial Union commander Ulysses S. Grant.New York Times BestsellersIn these two comprehensive and engaging volumes, preeminent Civil War historian Bruce Catton follows the wartime movements of Ulysses S. Grant, detailing the Union commander's bold tactics and his relentless dedication to achieving the North's victory ...

A history of the Manhattan building and its famous tenants, from Lauren Bacall to John Lennon, by the New York Times–bestselling author of "Our Crowd".When Singer sewing machine tycoon Edward Clark built a luxury apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side in the late 1800s, it was derisively dubbed "the Dakota" for being as far from the center of the downtown action as its namesake territory on the nation's western frontier. Despite its remo...

“Lulushi finds harrowing and inspiring incidences of both bravery and recklessness among the special forces arm of the wartime precursor to the CIA.” —Kirkus ReviewsThe OSS—Office of Strategic Services—created under the command of William Donovan, has been celebrated for its cloak-and-dagger operations during World War II and as the precursor of the CIA. As the “Oh So Social,” it has also been portrayed as a club for the well-connected before, during, and ...

The New York Times bestseller that inspired the documentary Shanghai 1937: Where World War II Began on Public Television.At its height, the Battle of Shanghai involved nearly a million Chinese and Japanese soldiers while sucking in three million civilians as unwilling spectators—and often victims. It turned what had been a Japanese imperialist adventure in China into a general war between the two oldest and proudest civilizations of the Far East. U...